The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

  He wrapped himself around Jones. He didn’t have time or clarity of mind to tailor his approach. All of Graham Cartwright’s training and careful advice fled like a herd of spooked horses. He went for hammer over chisel, like he had before he even knew what he was doing. He forced as much pure raw feeling across the bridge he’d built as he could.

  “Ah!” Jones cried, and the blows stopped.

  Chris stepped into the dark room. Jones lay on the floor. His knuckles were bloody, but they were in fine shape compared to the poor doctor’s face. The skin on his left cheek was split, his nose was bent and bleeding, and a cut on his forehead poured blood down over his face like a curtain.

  The doctor looked up. “Christopher?” he asked, blinking through the red veil over his eyes.

  Jones turned around. The sight of his ruined face was enough to completely freeze Chris in his steps, striking horror into his heart, but the man’s beady eyes were strangely dead. “Wh—”

  “Idiot!” Maris growled, and then she was thrusting Chris to one side so hard that he lost his footing, hit the wall, and slid down. “Police!” Maris shouted, pointing her gun directly at Jones. “Hands over your head!”

  Jones’s hands shook. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he mumbled. “Nobody is supposed to be here.” He didn’t raise his hands. He began to slowly get to his feet.

  “I’m warning you,” Maris said. Her voice was steady, but the barrel of her weapon shook. “Not another move. You’re under arrest.”

  “Arrest?” Jones laughed hollowly. He didn’t stop. “Is that a joke? I came here to kill him, you know. I’ve watched this house for months now, planning this night. He goes, or I do.”

  “You’ve watched…” Maris swallowed hard. Chris watched the apple of her throat bob. “You’ve seen everyone coming and going, haven’t you? Hah. You know everything there is to know about this place.”

  Jones gained his feet. He held up his split knuckles. A splatter of blood hit the floor. He took a step towards the policewoman, and her jaw bulged.

  “I’ll shoot,” she snapped.

  “Please, do.”

  Chris couldn’t look directly at him, at his melted flesh and stubby ears and drooping eyes and misshapen nose. But the connection between them hadn’t snapped when Chris had fallen, the way that it normally did when he was disturbed. And so he felt along the line, rebuilding places where it had frayed.

  Jones took another step forward.

  A hammer wouldn’t work again. Chris clenched his jaw and his fists. He dove back through the tattered scraps of memory left over from his childhood lessons, past visions of Will smiling brightly, of Agnes dancing freely, of Mother holding him and of Doctor Cartwright teaching him.

  There.

  Feel it, Will’s father whispered in his mind. Feel the emotion. You need to completely give yourself to it before you can push it onto another.

  Guilt, self-loathing, regret… none of the emotions that came easily to him would work. They would only convince Jones of the temptation of oblivion. He needed something else entirely.

  So he let himself go where he’d stopped himself for days.

  Get out of my house.

  Who the hell do you think you are?

  Get the fuck away from me!

  And then his own voice: Just because you’re perfectly fucking happy being a nancyboy doesn’t mean we’re all so shameless!

  He’d reached out his mind and blotted out Will’s hurt like it was just a spilled glass of milk that he could sop up. Not to make his friend feel better. Not to right a wrong he’d inflicted. And certainly not because he was some sort of benevolent healer.

  To absolve himself of responsibility for his own ugly words.

  Responsibility.

  He had to take responsibility.

  That sense that crashed over him, that knowledge of blame, of obligation, that sense of duty—he grabbed hold of it, wrapped himself in it, and then shoved it along their connection so hard it ripped out of him at all once and made him gasp aloud.

  Jones stopped.

  And crumpled.

  He hit the ground all at once, and his shoulders shook. Once. Twice. The third was accompanied by a sob.

  Maris lowered her gun, looking at it, baffled. Slowly, she uncocked it. The white glow faded. Billy Jones curled up on the ground, crying, and Maris Dawson slid her weapon back into her waistband.

  She turned to look at him, brow furrowed.

  Had she seen, somehow? Did she know? All those months ago, when he’d made sense of this power, he hadn’t told her. He hadn’t told Olivia. He hadn’t told anyone but Will.

  Will.

  His heart squeezed like it was in a vice grip. He couldn’t think about Will, oh Gods it was so raw that it was like an open wound and he hiccupped on tears when he sucked in a breath. He was such an idiot. A selfish, petty, gutless idiot. What had he done? What had he—

  He went to the doctor.

  “Doctor Livingstone,” he breathed, kneeling by him. The doctor reached out and gripped his hands tightly. “Are you all right?” Chris demanded.

  The doctor chuckled without mirth. He winced and gritted his teeth. There was blood on them. “Ah. I–I should be. With a bed and a lifeknitter and more than a few bandages. Thanks to you, once again, my boy.”

  “William Jones,” Maris said, hauling the man in question to his feet. “You’re under arrest for stalking and attempted murder.”

  Jones shook. Head to toe, he trembled like he’d just emerged from an ice bath, and he couldn’t stop murmuring under his breath: “Gods, what was I thinking? What was I thinking? My fault. All my fault.”

  Chris shied away from the horror in his voice. My emotions are mine, Will’s voice snapped through his memory, and guilt clawed up Chris’s throat. “I need to get Livingstone to bed,” he said. “And get a damned lifeknitter down here! Dammit! Didn’t Elouise say there wasn’t one at the party?”

  Maris grimaced. “Not sure what to do about that.” She craned her neck to look into the doctor’s face. “Livingstone. How are you feeling?”

  The doctor swayed and shook his head. “Not… well, I’m afraid,” he murmured.

  “Wonderful,” Maris growled.

  Chris looked at Jones and then looked away. Even in his state—perhaps especially in this state—Gods, it was hard to look at him. “What are we going to do about him? Take him in to Summergrove?”

  “Of course,” Maris said, and then looked the man over. She pursed her lips. When she glanced away from him, her eyes were filled with guilt. “… tomorrow. He said—”

  Chris swallowed and nodded. “That he’s been watching the guest house. I heard.”

  “Which means that he’s seen everyone coming and going. Including Em.”

  Chris took a deep breath. “Right,” he said. He nodded, once. “I’ll… ride up and get Olivia, once I have Livingstone down, and… and you’ll… keep an eye on him? And Livingstone? Gods.”

  Maris looked her prisoner up and down. Billy Jones was limp and crying, barely seeming to know that anyone else was even present. “Not sure this one even needs it,” she said. And she turned to Chris. Suspicion gleamed deep in her electric green gaze, and she narrowed her eyes and looked him slowly up and down. “Did you… do something to him?” she asked.

  Chris swallowed. He glanced away. He shrugged, helplessly. “What would I have done?” he asked, climbing to his feet with the doctor clinging to him. “I’m just a wordweaver.”

  octor Livingstone’s face twisted into an expression of pain as Chris helped him into his bed. The good doctor’s eyes were glazed, and his hands shook as he gripped Chris’s forearms.

  “Gods.” Chris shook his head, biting his lip. “It doesn’t exactly feel right to leave you here.”

  The doctor shook his head. He grabbed one of Chris’s hands and held it tightly. “I heard what you and Officer Dawson said to one another,” he said. His eyes were very serious through their sheen of pain. “Emilia…
you all think she’s in real danger, don’t you?”

  Chris froze. “I….”

  “Whenever Officer Dawson is here to visit Miss Banks, she always has the time to glare most prodigiously at me. And yet she hasn’t so much as glanced in my direction since she arrived.”

  “That’s not…” Chris murmured. He looked down at the doctor, at his blood-soaked and somehow still comforting face. “I’m not at liberty, Doctor Livingstone….”

  “Ah… then I’m a suspect.” The doctor managed to smile faintly. “Well. I hope my being down for the count gives you one less avenue you have to pursue, then.”

  “Doctor,” Chris began.

  “Please find her. She’s a good woman, a brilliant mind, and this country needs her. I always knew as much, but now that I actually know her… I can’t say that I relish the scandal she might bring to the movement, or even that I particularly want to think very hard about her… relationship with Officer Dawson myself, but I’ve come to admire her very much. She is passionate, kind, and a genius.” He chuckled weakly. “And if nothing else, Officer Dawson makes a particularly intimidating guard dog. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.”

  Chris took a deep breath and smiled faintly despite the nest of snakes in his middle. He patted the doctor’s hand. “We’re doing our best.” He glanced toward the door. Livingstone had been on Olivia’s list, but Chris knew who Olivia was actually looking at. “If you would, Doctor… I must request that you don’t voice your concerns to–well, that is. We don’t know what’s happened, but… it could be anyone. Anyone.”

  The doctor looked into his eyes, and then, slowly, began to nod. “Anyone,” he repeated, and as he heaved a sigh, he looked truly sick. “You mean Arthur. I hate that you might be right. My nephew has long been an admirer of Garrett Albany’s way of looking at the world, no matter how I’ve tried to show him the man is a thug. I truly thought I had gotten through to him, but perhaps…” He sighed. “No one shall hear a word.”

  Chris nodded. He knew he needed to go. Maris was standing over Jones in the darkroom, waiting for Olivia. Yet he felt entirely wrong just walking away from the doctor.

  He held up a hand. “How many fingers?” he asked.

  “Christopher,” the doctor said gently, and Chris dropped the hand, cheeks burning, “I’d tell you if my brains felt scrambled. It wouldn’t be my first concussion. I’m not going to sleep and never wake.”

  Chris nodded miserably. There was nothing to be done for it but trust the doctor, no matter how battered he looked. Before he could change his mind, he turned and left.

  A tortured, coarse voice ruined by fire and smoke floated to his ears when he passed the dark room. “It seemed so right. I’m a fool. A fool. I’ve spoiled it all.”

  Chris swallowed hard. He pushed the conjured images of Will’s face from his mind and hurried down the stairs like he was fleeing from a ghost.

  Thunder rolled ominously in the distance. The rain was thick as a curtain before him, heavy as a shower on his head, and he couldn’t have felt more relieved when he saw the lights of the Festival.

  Riding back through the fairgrounds was strange enough to feel unreal. Had it really been less than an hour ago when Olivia had dragged him through a country dance of strangers? Well, no one danced anymore. The mood had entirely changed. Everyone crowded under canopies, staring out, watching him, murmuring amongst each other. Olivia pushed through the crowd to join him, and they watched her, too.

  He steered Hobby from curious eyes and toward the stable.

  “What happened?” she asked, breathless.

  Chris surveyed the fairgoers clustered close enough to converse with. He winced. “Discretion, Olivia,” he muttered under his breath.

  She glanced over her shoulder at them and growled quietly. “No one has indulged in a reel since you and Maris rode off,” she said. “In fact, they’ve barely moved. And can you blame them? Less than five minutes after Arthur Norwood and Dayton Spencer get into fisticuffs, a police officer and my assistant gallop off down the hill like you have a missive from the Queen? Believe me. The party is quite over.”

  He nodded and looked behind him again, then bent so that she could hear him at a murmur. “The doctor is alive.”

  Olivia’s brows pulled down. “Alive,” she repeated. “Not fine.”

  “Yes.”

  “I really would have preferred ‘fine.’”

  “What about you?”

  She looked up at him, and for just a moment, her eyes shone. “I think I found something.”

  He blinked. “Found what? Something… relevant?”

  “Yet to be determined,” she said. “But let’s just say I think we’re about to find out what it was, exactly, that Em was working on.”

  The stable was empty. There was no sign of Mabelle Greene. Chris told Olivia about everything that had happened. All the while, he found he couldn’t take his eyes from that raw scar of yellow wood on the rafters. How did Miss Greene work here? Just the thought of Fernand’s water closet made him feel sick.

  Olivia helped him unsaddle Hobby and put him away in his stall. That done, she turned to him and fluffed her skirts.

  “Questioning Billy… yes, that’s a very good thought,” she said. “You and Maris are right about that. He could have knowledge he doesn’t even realize… and goodness, but it would be nice to get something good from this disaster.” She sighed, reaching over the stall door to pat Hobby’s soaking wet nose. “I should have seen it.”

  Chris watched her, knots in his stomach. “I, ah.” He ducked his head. “Believe me, Olivia. I understand what it’s like, being… so focused on one thing that it’s hard to look elsewhere.”

  She shook her head. “No excuse. Truthsniffer, remember? I’m supposed to be all about the whole picture. I let this get away. I could have prevented this. For the doctor’s sake, certainly, but… but for Billy, more than that.”

  Watching Olivia wrestling with the morality of her choices reminded Chris of the time he’d seen Tremaine fall into the sink: so pitiable and out of character that he felt compelled to put things back to their natural state. “You did say you found something?”

  She brightened slightly. “I think I did! We need to—ah. But yours is more important. Mine, I think—I hope—can wait.” Her lips twisted. “And, if nothing else, I don’t owe a moral burden to it.” She turned to him, stepped back, and sighed. “Unfortunately, we’re going to need to walk down, which means that we should take a moment to acquire some real coats. I hate to delay, but with this sort of rain slamming down, we’d just risk another horse stumbling in the dark if we ride. Maris is lucky she only got muddy.”

  Olivia and Chris met an agitated-looking Elouise Faraday in the hallway, wringing her hands and pacing back and forth. She actually breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of them. “Ah, thank all the gods. Livvie. I’ve been looking for you.”

  Olivia raised her eyebrows. “Well. This should be good.”

  “I just heard back from the men I sent to check on the roads. They’re already completely washed out! What a disaster. Today, of all days! I’ll need your help hostessing. Our guests will stay the night. Yes, all of them. I know we’ll be packed to full capacity, but I think we might have the room if we room staff and families together, and I—”

  She stopped and peered closer at them, taking in their water-resistant, hooded half-cloaks and boots that went up to their knees. Her face pulled into a tight frown. “You’ve always enjoyed the rain, Livvie,” she said, delivering the words like an accusation.

  “Yes, Mother,” Olivia said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve always considered it a clear mark of deviance in your disfavoured child, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t. Why are you bundled up so? We have canvas everywhere.”

  Olivia’s mouth tightened. “Heading out. Business,” she said.

  “But what about the guests?”

  “Well, Mother, I suppose they’ll have to do without my mon
strous face tucking them into bed, now won’t they?”

  Missus Elouise peered deep into her face for a moment before shaking her head in utter contempt. “Unbelievable,” she spat. “You are positively—I need you right now! For once in your life, be a Miller instead of a—Deathsniffer. You show up for the Festival when we would just as well not have you, and—”

  “When you would just as well not have me, Mother. As always, the rest of the estate’s denizens seem more or less fond of me!”

  “Only because you play at charming, and they can’t see what you really are!” Elouise snapped, and Olivia’s hands flexed. “You subject me to your presence today of all days and then are off chasing your little puzzles when I actually have a use for you? Mother Deorwynn, Olivia Faraday. Do you have reverence for anything?”

  Olivia opened her mouth—and then paused. Chris practically watched her disarm her retort, set the barb aside, and dismantle the mechanism with which to launch it. And then she seemed to consider very seriously. “No,” she said, finally. “I suppose I rather don’t. Is that what you want to hear, Mother?”

  Elouise closed her eyes tightly. She shook her head. “I want something else entirely.”

  “Then I suspect we’ll continue to be dreadful disappointments to one another,” Olivia chirped, deceptively cheerful, but Chris heard the exhaustion in her voice.

  Elouise opened her eyes and fixed Olivia with a stare that could freeze magma. “Solve your mystery then, you dreadful little goblin,” she said, but couldn’t seem to work up any venom. She sounded almost as tired as her daughter. “And remove yourself from my sight.”

  Olivia cracked a half-smile. “Oh?” she lilted. “Is this permission to skip Solstice dinner, then?”

  Elouise’s eyes flashed. “Consider it permission,” she said, with a voice like a sword splitting the air, “to not show your face here until you make a decision about whether or not you ever intend to be what your brother would have been and take responsibility for your legacy.”

  Olivia’s gaze went flat. She sighed. “Well,” she said. “It’ll be goose and eggnog alone for me henceforth, then, Mother. You seem to be under the impression that there hasn’t already been a decision made.” She brushed past her mother, actually shoving her to one side as she went. “Come along, Christopher.”